


Going to a Place

by Krowshi



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Nightmares, Songfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-16
Updated: 2018-02-16
Packaged: 2019-03-19 09:53:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,355
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13702062
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Krowshi/pseuds/Krowshi
Summary: Maybe there was something he could rank to be worse than the upside down...





	Going to a Place

**Author's Note:**

> Some quick fic I wrote based on the song Going to a Place by Joywave!  
> It feels like partly a vent fic and just me wanting to get some dark vibes out for the heck of it. It's been a while since I've written anything like this in general so. I hope you enjoy none the less!  
> Also don't forget to catch me on my Tumblr @the-cleric !

_“I’m going to a place…_  
I’m going to a place where…  
I'm going to a place where everybody's pretty, but they're all dead and vacant inside.” 

Will thought that his worst nightmares would lie with the upside down, with the demogorgon, the mind flayer… But suddenly, everything became so much worse. Suddenly, things were far more complicated and far more deep than he could have possibly handled. His inner demons had a grasp on his cranium and they were relentless, they had a stubborn hold on him that refused to budge despite his best efforts to scream and thrash around blindly at them. He was officially caught up in a whole new nightmare he could have never saw for himself. 

Although he was asleep, that didn't stop anything that happened in his dreams to feel real. With every solid wall his hand brushed and the soft taps of his shoes against the ground as he went through the halls of his school, Will was beginning to lose himself from reality. He weaved through a crowd as real as any other high school crowd and the brush of every shoulder bled through him like vines. The only difference between this crowd of students and the ones he actually went to school with, everyone wore the same face like a swarm of mannequins. Each individual face bore the individuality that they so rightfully owned, but they were so eerily the same. 

_“They're all the same with different memories_  
I start to wonder how they used to be  
I don't look like them, will they turn on me?  
I need a drink for sanity.” 

The scariest thing that really got Will to his core was when he was faced with his friends. His small ‘hey’ was met with several greetings in return, but all said with the same clip and tone to them, their vocal inflections their own, but that was only natural. It scared him to his core, his entire living being feeling like he was suddenly dropped into a world where everything became black and white. While he saw color, everyone else had nothing but greys in their vision - A sad broken world where people merely lived to live. 

Casting his gaze to Lucas and Dustin, Will bit his lip as he furrowed his brow in worry as he saw that their faces sat in a straight line - even Dustin’s who was ever the most expressive. Then what finally took the final blow was when he drew his eyes over to look into Mike’s cold, vacant ones. He let go of his lip entirely in favor of it wobbling helplessly as tears began to crystallize in his line of sight.

“Mike?” Will whispered hoarsely, calling out desperately for any sort of life that could be left in his best friend. When all that he got in return was a blank stare, Will couldn't handle it anymore. He couldn't just stand there while his best friend since kindergarten looked through him like he didn't exist, he couldn't just stand there and let him continue to look cold and vacant. 

This - Will told himself - was the worst nightmare he could ever have.

Gripping Mike’s arms firmly, he shook the taller boy with such force that he thought he’d jar even himself. He cried desperately, tears falling down his own cheeks like waterfalls before eventually he collapsed against this… this not-Mike. Sobs wracked his body violently as he leaned against the cold body who made no move to help him whatsoever. 

“Mike, please! Just say or do _something_!”

_“Tell me how I'm any different_  
Can you make me understand?  
'Cause I've seen all the imaging  
And there's, there's nothing there but a hollow man.” 

Everything around him vaporized like particles into the air, Will stumbled back away from Mike as he drifted up and away from him into stars in the void he now stood in. Will glanced around vigorously, trying to decipher, to seek an answer to what the hell was going on, but eventually, his constant spinning in circles brought him to a realization.

Everything was grey.

Now he was seeing grey.

He found himself in a constant rocking motion, back and forth, back and forth. Static played on in his field of vision and he couldn't seem to rip his eyes away from it as much as he wanted to, playing a role of a hollow man. The static crackles in the quiet of the space he inhabited rung out so loud, so unbearably loud, to the point that when it became too much, Will finally jolted out of his trance and threw his head back, screaming to the high heavens above him. 

**“LET ME GO!”**

_“Can you make it go away?_  
'Cause the vibe is wrong, yeah the vibe is wrong here  
Tell me, are you here to stay?  
Tell me you don't fly today.” 

Waking up in a cold sweat, Will’s vision had started out clouded, blurring any chance of looking around and comprehending his surroundings. Eventually, he was able to get his bearings and register the shaking oh his arms and the voice that rung out above him - that rung out above him with tone and fluideness and _emotion._

Blinking his eyes up to meet Mike’s, he stared for a while as the taller boy threw out one question after another in a worried tirade for his friend. Will slowly dissolved into tears, sobs growing loud as Mike eventually went quiet and gathered him up into his arms and pulled him close, cradling him with all the care and love in the world that he could muster. 

“God, M-Mike! I'm so s-scared! I-it’s all too m-much! Y-you! Dustin! L-Lucas! -" Will paused, letting out one particularly anguished sob as he hid his face further into Mike’s protective hold. “You a-all l-looked dead! Lifeless! Just make i-it stop! P-please stay with me!” 

Mike felt tears prick at his own eyes, threatening to spill over at his friends suffering. He didn't know how the world could be so out to get this precious boy that he was proud to call his best friend. He didn't deserve any of it, he deserved a full life filled with laughter and happiness and Mike was a man on a mission to make that happen. 

“Shhh, I have you… you're fine, I'm right here and I'm real and alive,” Mike quietly reassured into the smaller boy’s ear. He shut his eyes and breathed softly to help Will settle down with him. “I'll always be here, I love you. Remember that.” 

Will began to quiet down at that, his harsh breathing slowing and his sobs decreasing to small sniffles. He gave a deep breath, letting out all the air he didn't know he was holding and visibly slumped into Mike’s hold, cuddling himself up more in what the taller boy had to provide. 

“I think if there is anything worse than the upside down, it's the thought of you guys being nothing but vessels or worse - dead,” Will spoke out quietly. Mike went wide-eyed and pulled away slightly to look into Will’s eyes and protest, but everything died at the tip of his tongue once he had looked at the boy below him. 

His face was so open, so genuine and sure of his words that he couldn't find it in himself to complain. Will was too good for him - for all of them - and putting the fear for his friend’s lives above his own traumas was a whole new rung to it and god, Mike loves him so much. No one could ever compare to Will in his book, Will was like a god send especially created for him, but even so, he could never get himself to think that he deserved all of this in one human being. Not ever in his life would he think that. 

So instead of berating his smaller friend for being stupid for putting his friend’s first, Mike leaned down and rested his head against the brunette in front of him. Yeah, Will was something else, but he deserved the world for it all.


End file.
